


Picking Up The Pieces

by Fudgyokra



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, End of the World, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Supernatural Elements, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:38:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8854708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: Dipper survived Weirdmageddon. Mabel didn’t. Despite what Dipper might have previously thought, that did not mean he would no longer see his sister again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreightTrainFrank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreightTrainFrank/gifts).



> Requested by and therefore dedicated to Tumblr user waldorkler. Thanks for the excellent blueprints of this. \m/ I’ve only ever done one horror prompt before, so this was a refreshing change of pace.

None of them ever imagined it would end up here, with the town ablaze and Bill seconds away from orchestrating the death of one of the squirming kids in his hand. He displayed them to Stan and Ford, whose imprisoned bodies crumpled to the floor in agony while they begged for any semblance of mercy that Bill might have been capable of.

Mercy, however, was not one of the demon’s strong suits.

“Y’know, I think I’ll kill one of ‘em now for the heck of it!” he declared, aiming his gaze of blind fury upon Dipper and Mabel. “ _Eenie, meenie, miney_ —”

“Wait!” It was Mabel who had called out, stopping Bill’s game mid-way. “I…” She looked at Dipper, who mirrored back her frightened expression. She couldn’t let him die for something she had started. The rift was her fault, not his. She had done this; she was the reason they were here now. “I want you to choose me.”

“Mabel, no!” Dipper cried, struggling against Bill’s clutches, to no avail. From where they were trapped, Ford and Stan issued disagreements of their own, though they fell on deaf ears.

“I can’t let you kill my brother,” Mabel said, her voice shaking with the effort it took to appear strong. In reality, she’d never been so afraid in her life. “Take me instead.”

“Oh, how noble! What can’t a little bit of good old-fashioned guilt do!”

“What are you talking about?” Dipper asked in a panic. “Mabel, what does he mean?”

The tears in her eyes were instantaneous. “I—I didn’t mean to…”

“Go ahead! Tell your family why they’re here! Tell ‘em what you’ve done!”

“I just wanted—” Mabel’s lip quivered. She couldn’t bring herself to look any of her family members in the eye. “I started the rift. I helped Bill create this nightmare.”

“No, Mabel!” Ford started, only to be cut off by Bill’s cackle filling the room.

“Kudos to you, kid!” he exclaimed, plucking Dipper out of his hand and flicking him into the cage that contained the other Pines twins. “Why don’t you tell everyone?”

Suddenly there was a microphone in front of her face, and she could hear her heavy breathing echoing clearly across the entire town. Bill was _broadcasting_ this. Mabel could barely hear herself speak past the blood rushing in her ears. For a moment all she could manage was to sob an apology, but with Bill’s expectant eye on her she cracked. “I did it!” She was spilling her guts to everyone now; everyone would know that this was because of her. “I made this happen! It’s all my fault!”

“Mabel Pines, everybody!” Bill said jubilantly into the mic. “Give her a hand!”

The microphone vanished in a cloud of black smoke, yet Bill’s voice still boomed with unrelenting intensity. “Confession’s good for the soul, ain’t it? When I take over this galaxy, I’ll be sure to give you a shout out!” He dropped the girl onto the ground, where she continued to sob with her face in her hands. “Now say, Shooting Star, I can’t help but think it’s kind of unfair you never got to join in on all the _fun._ ” He continued to ignore Ford and Stan’s continuing pleas and Dipper’s choked cries. “Whaddya say I let you in on a few days’ worth of chaos _all at once_.” He spoke the last three words deliberately and emphatically, eye glinting blood red.

Dipper tried desperately to drag himself closer to his sister, prepared to do anything to save her, but it was clear within seconds that he wouldn’t make it in time.

Her screams were piercing.

Stan folded in on himself with his hands covering his face. Ford closed his eyes and pursed his lips, trying to contain his grief in a long inhalation. Dipper did not look away.

The cacophony of sounds that accompanied her chaotic torment made his stomach turn. Shrieks and cracks, wails and sizzling… None of that compared to what was unfolding right before his eyes.

Mabel pawed wildly at her face as her left eye turned completely to stone and cracked away shard by shard, each piece hitting the floor with a dull clink. Her other eye began sprouting eyes of its own, one by one until it resembled a pot boiling over. The mass of irises spun in wildly catastrophic motions, looking around frantically as they bubbled to the floor.

Dipper heaved, still trying to crawl toward her despite his injured arm and overwhelming nausea. Bill, however, only shot him back against the cage with force, jarring the elder twins into looking on at the unraveling horror. Strong stomachs be damned, Stan was sick instantaneously and Ford backpedaled in horror until he collapsed back against the iron bars.

“Bill, goddammit, it’s a deal!” the latter yelled. “You can enter my mind! Take it! Take whatever you want, just stop this!”

“Too late, Fordsy, I’m having too much fun!” The demon cracked his knuckles and spun his finger in the air, drumming up something that gurgled violently inside Mabel’s stomach.

_Ants._ Thousands of them poured from her throat, a writhing black cloud of pincers and antennae. Her hands clenched to fists on the floor, then sank down as her fingers turned black, blue, clear—becoming pure ice little by little until they melted away right in front of her.

When she opened her mouth to scream, her braces began dripping, sending molten titanium raining from her lips in a smoking downpour. Her mouth filled with blood until it seeped over her teeth, leaving behind no remnants of tongue when it finally emptied.

Then, in an instant, it was over. Her head simply combusted, leaving a cloud of glitter in its wake like some glossed-over form of brain matter would make the situation any less awful. Her body became nothing more than a pile of rainbow-colored substance, coagulating on the floor like thick, sticky blood.

Bill laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

Dipper’s vision blacked out before his head even hit the ground.

//

When he came to, he was lying on the grass. The sky was blue and there wasn’t a monster in sight. In his disoriented state he managed to make out only the figures of Soos and his great uncle Ford standing some feet away, looking down at something—someone.

_Stan._

“Great uncle Ford? Soos?” he warbled, scrambling to his feet. “What happened?”

“We had to destroy his mind to defeat Bill,” Ford explained morosely.

_They had defeated Bill Cipher._ With great fortitude and sacrifice, the demon was destroyed. That did not necessarily mean it wasn’t the end of the world to the Pines family, who had lost not only an innocent young girl but Stan as well, who’d given it all to save what was left of his family.

He sat on the ground looking around until Ford knelt down to wrap his arms around him. “You’re our hero, Stanley,” he said with a sniffle. Stan, who only hugged back out of politeness, had no idea what was happening or who he even was.

Maybe he’d been blessed not to remember what had just happened.

Dipper’s gaze drifted to the pile of slime that had once been his sister. The only thing he was capable of feeling for a moment wasn’t despair. Instead, when Soos’s voice nearly cracked saying his name, Dipper felt confused.

What was left of Mabel laid there on the ground in front of them, glittering in the sunlight. Dipper couldn’t seem to comprehend what that meant. He stood there for what felt like an eternity waiting for his sister to come out from the trees and hug him like everything was normal.

“I’m so sorry, Dipper.” Ford said, his face shiny with tears though Dipper couldn’t imagine why. They were all just sitting here waiting for Mabel to sit up and say something, right? To forgive Dipper for all that he’d said, or to tell him she was ready to face the world together. Anything. Any indication that she was fine.

“We have to go,” Ford said, voice stony. “We have to do something with Stan.” He was beginning to sound hollow, which annoyed Dipper. If he would just be patient, Mabel would come to any minute.

She never did.

The next thing he felt was the stinging blow of realization, followed by everything in him falling apart. When Ford approached him he was red-faced and shaking, looking behind him at Stan and Soos with tremors in his hands.

They were all despondent, unsure of what to do next. They knew they’d have to rebuild, but where would they begin? Dipper would have to go back to Piedmont alone, face his parents alone, pack his bags alo— “Dipper!”

His whole body jerked in surprise upon hearing his sister’s voice calling him. He spun around to look around him but saw nothing. He cast wide eyed upon Ford and Soos, who’d returned to their task of trying to talk some sense into Stan, though he was clearly not being receptive. Had none of them heard that?

“Dipper!” There it was again. His heart was racing in his chest. He wasn’t hallucinating, was he? He didn’t dare call back to her in fear of looking downright insane. Where was that sound coming from?

“It’s me, Dipper! Can you hear me?”

Slowly, Dipper craned his head back to look up into the sky. There, floating just above him, was Mabel, waving her arms frantically to get his attention. “Can you hear me?” she repeated, looking right at him.

Dipper couldn’t make any sound, so he nodded in place of words. When Mabel tried to hug him, she fell right through his body. They couldn’t touch, couldn’t feel each other’s presence. But they could see each other, and they could hear.

All over again, Dipper began to cry. “Oh no,” he said to himself, rubbing his forehead. “Ohh no, no, no.”

Ford approached him with a grim expression and began to comfort him the best he could. “Despite these terrible losses,” he began, stubbornly blinking away tears, “we did it. We defeated Bill and he can never come back. You have to take solace in that.”

Dipper’s lip quivered. He’d never seen Ford cry before and he was sure Ford didn’t know how to deal with _him_ crying, so all he did was nod along, letting him go back to Stan to help him off the ground.

Ford might not have been any good at comforting him, but Mabel was _here_. She wasn’t here in the way he wanted him to be but here she was, nonetheless.

Suddenly, she spoke. “There’s gotta be a way to get Stan’s memory back.” She sounded just as heartbroken as he felt. “C’mon, you have to help me think. You’re the smart one.”

Dipper swallowed hard. “I…I think,” he started, looking over at his remaining family. “I think we should take him back to the Shack.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ford answered, taking Stan’s hand and gesturing somewhere in the distance. “Come on, Stanley, let’s get you home.”

“You’ll feel better once you’re there, Mr. Pines,” said Soos with a confident tone. Dipper could tell it was disingenuous, but it did offer the pretense of hope.

The group made their way through the ruins of the town in silence until they reached the Shack, looking worse for wear and yet more like home than any of them could’ve ever hoped for. “This is a pretty neat place ya got here,” Stan said once they’d all meandered in through the front door, which hung on only one hinge and yet seemed just fine to him.

“It’s your place, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper offered. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Nope,” Stan answered cheerfully as he plopped down in his favorite chair. He was entirely unaware of the way his family surrounded him with identical looks of despair on their faces as they regarded his condition. What was there left to do?

“Dipper,” Mabel said as she darted toward her scrapbook, which stuck out amidst a pile of rubble thanks to its vibrant color. “Look! This has to work,” she said desperately, pointing at the book. “It has to!”

Dipper carefully maneuvered around several fallen objects and bent down to pick up the scrapbook, bright pink and glittery and so very Mabel. He had to swallow any emotions while he walked up to Stan and set the book into his lap. “Look Grunkle Stan, these are our memories from this summer.”

Ford and Soos approached the chair to look on, and though it took many long, painstaking hours, eventually the lightbulb went off.

“He remembers! I can’t believe it!” Ford exclaimed, putting a hand to his temple. “Dipper, it worked!”

As he clutched the book to his chest, Dipper answered, “Thank Mabel. It was hers.”

Ford knelt down and put a hand on his shoulder again. “She did it. Your sister saved Stan’s mind. I owe her the world.”

“So do I,” Dipper said, looking over at where she hovered, her hands clasped and her eyes watering. “I owe her more than I ever gave her.”

Behind them Stan finally rose to his feet, and when Ford did the same, they embraced. When they parted, however, the words that came from Stan’s mouth wiped the smiles from everyone’s faces. “Where is Mabel, anyway?”

He hadn’t remembered everything, it appeared.

They were all silent.

Dipper didn’t want to see him collapse again in heartbreak. He couldn’t watch it again. Hesitantly, aware of whatever consequences he might bring upon himself, he said, “She’s right here.”

“Yeah, in our hearts,” Soos said, wringing his hands.

“No, I mean—” Dipper gestured vaguely and looked beseechingly at Mabel as though she could offer some assistance. “She’s here. I can see her.”

The emotion of the room changed dramatically, then. Ford and Soos exchanged surprised glances, and Stan regarded Dipper with confusion. “What are you talking about? Where is she? She’s hiding, isn’t she?”

Dipper pursed his lips and looked at the floor. “No, Grunkle Stan. I mean she’s…gone. But she’s _not_ gone.”

“You can…see her?” Ford asked tentatively, glancing around the empty space in the room as though he were trying to visualize where she might be. Knowing Ford, that was likely the case.

Stan, with an abrupt change of expression, seemed to remember what the problem was and put his head in his hands. “Dipper, what do you mean you can see her?” he asked. “Does that mean she’s in the mindscape? Can you bring her back?”

Dipper’s heart skipped a beat. _Maybe, just maybe…_ “Mabel! Remember when you made that puppet show?”

A look of recognition dawned on her face. She began blindly groping around for anything she could send her spirit into—chunks of wood, fallen items, any little thing would do. Minutes passed, and eventually she sunk to the floor, defeated. “I can’t do it, Dipper. I’m not…here.” She sniffled, sending a wave of grief over Dipper’s body. Why had he dared to hope?

“She can’t do it,” he said numbly. “She isn’t in the mindscape.”

The room fell silent once again.

“Can she… Can she see me?” Stan asked, kneeling down on one knee beside Dipper. “Mabel, can you hear me, sweetie?”

Mabel looked at Dipper, who nodded in her stead. “She can see and hear everyone.”

“But only you can see and hear _her_ ,” Ford said, rubbing his chin. “It looks like she might have attached herself to you.”

“What does that mean?” Dipper asked, looking up at his great uncle blearily. “Can I bring her back somehow?”

“Well, as far as the mechanics of the spirit realm would have me believe, there is no way to bring her back.” Ford frowned and watched as Stan and Dipper stood up. “I’m sorry,” he offered, “But it looks like you’ll have to grow up without her, Dipper.”

The words rang in his ears, computing slowly until all he could feel was cold air on his skin. It was like she had died all over again. He felt tears well in his eyes, and he looked at his sister with blurry vision. “Mabel, I—”

“We can do this, Dipper,” she interrupted, trying to grab his hands only to remember that she couldn’t. “I mean, you can do this. I can still be with you for a little longer.” She smiled despite the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Not growing up won’t be so bad,” she continued when Dipper couldn’t seem to find the words. “I’ll never have to worry about…y’know, hormones and stuff.” She tried to laugh, but Dipper knew she was no good at faking happiness.

“I can bring you back,” he said, tone desperate. “I can dedicate my life to it.”

“Dipper, no,” Stan and Ford said at the same time.

“You can’t do that,” Mabel agreed, pulling her hair over her shoulder to tug at it. “I can’t let you waste everything you’ve got going for you. I know you can do it without me.”

Dipper shook his head. “I don’t—”

“I know it!” Mabel was sniffling her way through every word, but somehow she managed to get her point across. “I’m proud of you, Dipper. You did something no one else our age could even imagine. You’re lucky, and I want you to go on with your life…stupid,” she said with a weak smile. “All right? For me?”

“Okay,” Dipper said, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’ll make it for you. For both of us, Mabel. Are you coming back to Piedmont?”

“I…” Mabel closed her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just follow you around forever, Dipper. You’ve gotta move on without me.” She tugged at her sweater to avoid making eye contact.

“But where will you go?” Dipper asked, panicked.

“What’s happening?” Stan asked, not reacting well to the tone of his nephew’s voice. “Dipper, what’s she saying?”

Soos had to leave the room; Ford didn’t seem to be able to look in Dipper’s direction.

“I have to leave,” Mabel said softly. “I just wanted to say goodbye…and that I’m sorry.”

“What on earth do you have to be sorry for?” Dipper asked incredulously.

“I’m the reason Bill was—”

“No, no, Mabel,” he interrupted, reaching out for again in a vain attempt to touch her hand. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“God, no,” Ford said sternly, finally risking a glance in their direction. “Mabel, wherever you are I want you to know that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t made a deal with him in the first place. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I brought this on us,” Stan said in no particular direction, “If anything, I’m the one to blame.”

“There’s no one to blame but Bill,” Dipper said adamantly, “and he’s gone. He’s dead. Mabel, listen,” he worried his lip for a moment, then finished his thought. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I was leaving you behind.”

Mabel’s lip quivered. “I’m gonna miss you, bro-bro.”

There was a hitch in Dipper’s breathing, but he managed to hold back any further tears. “I’m gonna miss you too, stupid.”

“You’re stupid,” Mabel said fondly, smiling at him as her form slowly dissipated.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she replied. Then, in an airy and distant voice she asked, “Best friends forever?”

Dipper watched the color fade from his sister’s face with a wavering smile. “Best friends forever.”

And just like that she was gone, leaving the room feeling emptier than it had before.


End file.
